The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topic
The picture shows the cover page of Nature, Vol 364, 8 July 1993 Issue no. 6433. It shows the surface displacement associated with the June 1992 magnitude 7.3 earthquake in Landers, seen by interferometric processing of two images from the ERS-1 satellite. One full colour cycle in the interferometric fringes represent a change of 28 mm in the ground-to-satellite range between pre- and post-earthquake images. Solid lines show the surface rupture as mapped in the field.
The image comes from a paper called 'The displacement field of the Landers earthquake mapped by radar interferometry' with authors Didier Massonnet, Marc Rossi, Cesar Carmona, Frederic Adragna (CNES), Gilles Pletzner (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees) and Kurt Feigl (Scot Conseil) and published on pages 138 - 142.